born Nov. 2, 1815, Lincoln, Eng.
died Dec. 8, 1864, Ballintemple, Ire.
British mathematician.
Though basically self-taught and lacking a university degree, in 1849 he was appointed professor of mathematics at Queen's College in Ireland. His original and remarkable general symbolic method of logical inference is fully stated in Laws of Thought (1854). Boole argued persuasively that logic should be allied with mathematics rather than with philosophy, and his two-valued algebra of logic, now called Boolean algebra , is used in telephone switching and by electronic digital computers.
George Boole, engraving.
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.